How to lead successful creative teams

Welcome to Spark, a newsletter from Vivace. We curate and publish the most interesting thinking and ideas from our community on themes ranging from business and finance to culture and creativity. Send pitches and feedback to [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

Hello Spark reader,

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast,’ as the famous quote goes. And yet it’s probably one of the single most neglected areas of any business anywhere, often seen as a ‘nice-to-have’, rather than a core competency, let alone a keystone of success.

But why is this? Too much ambiguity? Too much complexity? Too much emotionality? The reasons would be worthy of a whole investigative series, but the fact is that great leaders don’t shy away from the opportunity to get right in the feels.

As we’ve discussed in Spark before, successful teams are the foundation of successful businesses, and successful teams are happy, connected, and supported. A few weeks ago, Ben Jarrold cooked up Part 1 of his team-building and leadership recipe, providing structure and guidance to a topic that can often feel more art than science. This week, he’s back with an insight-packed Part 2 for both aspiring and seasoned leaders.

—joel

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How to build and lead successful teams: Part 2

Guest article by Ben Jarrold

Reading this quote for the first time conjured a mix of negative and positive connotations for me: the first half prompted the thought of a terrible boss early on in my career, but the second recalled an amazing one.

The way anyone behaves, communicates, shares ideas, asks for help, seeks, and gives feedback can be influential. But for those blessed with the responsibility to lead, the shadow we cast has far greater potential reach.

As leaders, we should be striving to learn from both the good and bad examples that we’ve experienced, refining and adding our own leadership flavor, not to perfect, but to find the right harmony.

In Part 1: The hiring ingredients, I shared the key lessons I’d learned from 20 years of building, nurturing, and managing effective teams, specifically around making the most of recruitment opportunities to develop the ‘right’ team.

This follow-up focuses on the critical next step in leading your team to success: thoughtfully shaping a complementary environment that fosters harmony and enables effective work.